engleski

Prospective Primary School Teacher Views on personal and professional Qualities

Teacher competences and teacher qualities are widely discussed topics in scientific literature. There are large scale projects dealing with teacher competences carried out at a European level. TUNING, one of the best known projects, lists generic teacher competences and classifies them as: instrumental, interpersonal and systemic competences (TUNING, 2009). OECD’s project Teachers Matter (2005) finds that it is necessary that initial teacher education does not only provide basic training in subject-matter knowledge, pedagogy and general pedagogical knowledge, but also develops the skills required for reflective practice and research on-the-job. Teachers need to be aware of their competences as well as their personal and professional qualities. The paper presents the results of the research carried out with the first (N = 90) and the fifth (final) year (N = 90) students currently studying at the Faculty of Teacher Education, the University of Zagreb. They are all prospective primary school teachers. The main goals of the research were to identify student perception of the key personal and professional teacher qualities and to determine whether student perception of these qualities changes with the level of the initial teacher training. A questionnaire constructed out of two open-ended questions was used to examine student perception of the five most important qualities that a teacher should posses. These qualities were further ranked by the students depending on the level of importance and the level of acquisition. The results show common teacher qualities identified by both groups of students and differences in rank according to the level of the initial teacher education.

prospective teachers; personal teacher qualities; professional teacher qualities

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